1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to sights for use with assault rifles, other military rifles, tactical or hunting firearms or other shooting equipment typically used in exigent circumstances with optical alignment instruments.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
Military arms including assault rifles such as the M16A2 and the M4 are used by soldiers and marines under the most difficult conditions, and those rifles often take quite a beating.
The modern soldier or marine can be equipped with a wide variety of equipment and so the rifles have at times been adapted to carry things not formerly found on combat infantry weapons. In response, accessory supporting handguards have been offered that carry from one to four longitudinally aligned picatinny rail style mounting supports. Such supports are offered by quite a number of companies such as Knights Armament and ARMS. The Knights Armament rail support has wide usage in the military and is known as the RIS (Rail Interface System), and the RIS support replaces the front hand guard on an M16A2 or the M4.
The typical Colt-supplied front hand guard on the M4 is just a plastic sleeve structure in two halves and has a double walled heat shield. The standard front hand guard doesn't have any support or attachment point for accessories, since it doesn't have the picatiny rails. So the standard front hand guard has to be removed to allow use of, e.g., the RIS. One often sees troops in combat with standard M4 hand guards or forends but more and more the troops are changing to RIS forends because they are hanging a variety of accessories on the RIS handguard replacement supports, such as laser pointers, flash lights, bipods. As a result, one problem is that many M4s carried in the field nowadays are optic-sight only. The rifles carrying the RIS accessory rails are often equipped with either ACOG® AimPoint® or EOTech® optical sights, and optical sights such as these may be damaged when exposed to rough use.
If a soldier were to drop his or her weapon and that optical sight was rendered ineffective, it would be good for them to have something to fall back on until they can get back to an armorer. The back-up sights typically in use are standard issue or flip-up sights. Back up iron sights are available on the M4, since the front sight is still affixed to the barrel and so a flip-up rear sight is also provided, but in order to bring it the standard back-up iron sights to use, one must remove the damaged optical sight and then flip the standard rear sight up. So there are two motions; the first, removing the optical sight, is easier on some models than others. But optical sight removal turns out to be quite a chore in some cases, and the soldier or marine may be engaged in a firefight and unable to stop for a session of impromptu gunsmithing.
There is a need, therefore, for a structure and method permitting the shooter to continue engaging his or her target after an assault rifle carrying an optical sight has been impacted in a manner that renders the optical sight inoperative.